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We All Wore Stars
Memories of Anne Frank from her Classmates
- Author: Theo Coster
- Category: Non-fiction Biography / Memoir
- Publisher: Carrera Uitgeverij (Netherlands), Palgrave (US)
- Pub date: December 2009 (Netherlands), September 2011 (UK)
- Length: 224 pages
About We All Wore Stars
One day a few children simply didn’t show up. That’s how it started.
The next day someone else was gone. Little by little the classrooms became emptier. Children changed places, just so they could sit closer together.
No one dared to ask aloud where those children had gone. The one thing we were sure of, is that they weren’t absent because they were ill.
They were enthusiastic, intelligent and ambitious: Anne Frank and her classmates. Theo Coster was one of them. Shortly before his 80th birthday, he got back in touch with five former classmates and met them in Jerusalem and Amsterdam. They shared their memories of Amsterdam in the first years of World War II and talked about the years that followed: most of them went into hiding but some were sent to the Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen internment camps. Different though their experiences were, the war and Anne Frank have had a profound influence on the rest of their lives.
Only with the benefit of hindsight can we see the enormous effect that a little good fortune or bad luck can have on one’s life, and also how different the second part of the War was for these six young classmates. Theo Coster finds himself both shocked and fascinated by those differences, and how they have affected the lives of those who survived. Written in the light, sympathetic voices of Theo Coster and the other classmates, WE ALL WORE STARS shares their wonder as well as their concerns: never again should children have to suffer in the wars adults create.
About the Author
Theo Coster was a classmate and friend of Anne Frank at the Amsterdam Jewish Lyceum. He survived World War II in hiding and has lived in Tel Aviv since 1955. Along with his wife Ora, he is the founder of Theora Design. Their family business became a world leader in the invention and design of games, toys, activities, crafts, dolls, electronic games and novelties. To date, Theora has created over 155 different concepts that have been licensed to manufacturers all over the world, many of which have become household names. Among the most famous is the game ‘Guess Who?’. Theo and Ora also produced the documentary film, ‘Classmates of Anne Frank’ (2008). The book to which it gives its name is based on the same material as the film and was published in Holland in 2009.